moving from Chicago with one paycheck (Seattle: mortgage, townhome, job market)

[marioana]

I have some friends who are thinking of moving to Seattle area, but they are not sure. He is a software developer and currently interviewing with Amazon, and she is a junior project manager who is trying to enter the IT field. They are living in Chicago, paying mortgage on a townhome and doing ok-ish on one paycheck. She worked for 5 years as a department manager for a civil engineering company and she has a BS and MS in Computer Science. She is currently not working and is finding a hard time finding something in Chicago area because everyone wants and IT PM that has coded previously.
Moving to Seattle will mean probably a 10-20% salary increase for him, but houses are so much more expensive in Seattle area than Chicago and they have no idea if she could find work there. Any idea how the job market is for a junior PM in

[Garethe]

Originally Posted by marioana

I have some friends who are thinking of moving to Seattle area, but they are not sure. He is a software developer and currently interviewing with Amazon, and she is a junior project manager who is trying to enter the IT field. They are living in Chicago, paying mortgage on a townhome and doing ok-ish on one paycheck. She worked for 5 years as a department manager for a civil engineering company and she has a BS and MS in Computer Science. She is currently not working and is finding a hard time finding something in Chicago area because everyone wants and IT PM that has coded previously.
Moving to Seattle will mean probably a 10-20% salary increase for him, but houses are so much more expensive in Seattle area than Chicago and they have no idea if she could find work there. Any idea how the job market is for a junior PM in

Washington State has no income tax and that is playing a serious role in my reasons for moving back, I'm that much ahead from the beginning. I've found that states that have income tax have sales/property taxes just as high as Washington.

I've been researching the job market in Seattle quite a bit and it's amazing right now, compared to Kansas City and even the other places I've been watching like Dallas, one time considered to be over the rainbow in terms of jobs but not so much now. As I see it, the momentum in my industries (manufacturing, logistics, construction, and wholesale/distribution) is going to continue into the spring even when taking into account the winter/holiday lull and many of them will be in need of PM's.

I think one of the things Seattle has going for it is the Port of Seattle. Just like Kansas City stayed afloat because it's the 2nd largest rail hub in the country; both of which are necessary to our country's infrastructure regardless of how many jobs move overseas, we still need ports and trains. And these are the type of "read between the lines" data that I look for behind the sensational headlines. When I used to work in media, we had a saying, "good news doesn't sell newspapers" so always keep that in mind when making decisions.